@FRBIRD

The Rev. Michael Bird, rector of Christ Church in Bronxville, uses his iPad to check his Facebook account while at the Bronxville church. Bird is very active on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

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When Superstorm Sandy hit, the Rev. Sanford A. Key posted on Facebook that St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Somers had hot meals and electricity.

Soon after, a couple from nearby Heritage Hills came looking for food.

“The woman’s daughter was in South Carolina, saw the post and called to tell them,” said Key, who created the church’s Facebook page to make exactly that type of connection with his community.

“We moved from static, which was the website, to something that’s active. I can update it immediately,” he said.

Key is part of a new wave of religious leaders flocking to Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites because that’s where their congregations are in the 167 hours a week they aren’t attending services.

“Any congregation that is not investing in this conversation right now is missing a huge opportunity,” said Rabbi Jonathan Blake of the Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale. “I like to refer to myself as a 21st-century rabbi. I was ordained in the year 2000, and my rabbinate has coincided with the explosion of Web 2.0 connectivity. It’s a very effective tool for ministry.”

A 2012 survey of 250 U.S. churches by the marketing firm BuzzPlant found that half were participating in social media.

What’s more, 46.1 percent said social media was the most effective way to communicate their message, followed by knocking on doors (24.7 percent), newspapers (14.3 percent), radio (9.1 percent) and television (5.8 percent).

When Pope Benedict XVI joined Twitter this month (@Pontifex), he gained more than 1.3 million followers who might not otherwise have seen his words.

“Liking” a church, synagogue, mosque or monastery on Facebook means its updates — along with photos of your college roommate’s kids — will show up on your iPhone.

“As people run here and there in their daily lives, people get disconnected. This is an avenue to maintain connection,” said the Rev. Michael Bird, rector of Christ Church Bronxville.

Entwining themselves in their congregants’ everyday lives allows religious leaders to become beacons in a crisis, whether it’s a natural disaster or a human tragedy like the shootings in Newtown, Conn.

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When Bird heard about the massacre, he posted a prayer on Facebook and linked to it via Twitter.

“It was an avenue to reach out to parishioners and let them know the church was going to be open and they could come in anytime,” he said. “A number of people who stopped in said, ‘It meant the world to me to see that.’ ”

Most of Bird’s posts aren’t as solemn, but he said that even the lighthearted ones — such as pictures of pets to celebrate the Feast of St. Francis — serve a spiritual purpose.

“We’ve been clear with our parish that when we send something out, it’s going to matter. It’s either informative or contemplative. It’s going to keep them in touch with us and open them up to God’s presence,” Bird said. “Christ Church is not using this as a way to maintain market share.”

Bird said he limits his tweets.

“We’re careful not to overutilize something, or you can turn people off,” he said, adding with a chuckle: “I think I’d be run out of town on a rail if I were tweeting during the liturgy.”

The Rev. Cyndi Stouffer, pastor at the Pearl River and Suffern United Methodist churches, was required to tweet in a course on evangelism she took at Drew University’s Theological School. She graduated in 2011.

“It used to be if you did a newsletter you were good, and that doesn’t work anymore,” she said.

When her congregants gathered on Christmas, her sermon wasn’t a surprise because she had shared the subject — “Christmas is not your birthday” — on Facebook.

“I try to give people a taste of what’s coming,” Stouffer said. “I’m only one person, so whatever message I preach on Sunday morning can only go so far. When people share that message, they can take it far.”

After Stouffer posted recently about a blanket-making event, a young church member shared it with friends, and 10 of them came to help.

“They had no affiliation with the church, but wanted to be part of that experience,” Stouffer said.

Nick Macagnone, a freelance graphic designer, set up the Facebook page for Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church in Yonkers as a labor of love for his parish, but soon discovered his posts were reaching Bulgaria.

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“It started out being local parish news, and maybe I would put up some YouTube videos on Russian chanting. Then I started putting pictures and interesting Orthodox-related images and news items and sayings from the Desert Fathers, and it started taking off,” Macagnone said. “It’s surprising to me how a parish website in Yonkers can be viewed in Palestine.”

When Somers firefighters hung a U.S. flag between two ladder trucks to honor Sandy Hook school victim Anne Marie Murphy, who grew up in Katonah, the post on St. Luke’s Facebook page received “likes” from as far away as Michigan.

“My responsibility as a rector is to create a community space, not just for our own little enclave of 120 or 150 people,” Key said.

The Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel draws people from all over to see its 37-foot Buddha statue. Visitors often post photos of their trip on the monastery’s Facebook page, program coordinator Kaity Lu said.

“We are trying to build a community here,” she said. “Most people nowadays are on Facebook.”

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project reports that eight in 10 Americans who are active in religious groups are online. Of those, 58 percent use social networking sites, compared to 64 percent of those who aren’t religiously active.

Rabbi Jeffrey Brown, the 34-year-old spiritual leader of Scarsdale Synagogue Temples Tremont and Emanu-El, said that young leaders like himself are “planting seeds” among older congregants.

“If you are talking about a younger population hard-wired into spending time online, getting news on the computer, getting them to periodically visit a blog is a nonissue. It’s normal for them,” he said. “For those not culturally accustomed, it’s a major shift. It takes years to train a community to incorporate that into their daily routine.”